1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a speaker for a portable terminal having a resonance space, and more particularly to a speaker for a portable terminal including a speaker module for emanating high quality sound in multiple directions through a resonance space inside the portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, “portable terminals” refer to apparatuses that can conveniently be carried by a user to perform wireless communication. According to their appearance, such portable terminals may be classified into bar-type terminals, flip-type terminals, and folder-type terminals. That is, the bar-type terminal has a single housing shaped like a bar, the flip-type terminal has a flip or a cover which is pivotally mounted to a bar-shaped housing by a hinge unit, and the folder-type terminal has a folder coupled to a bar-shaped housing by a hinge unit in such a manner that the folder can be rotated in order to be folded to or unfolded from the housing.
Additionally, each of the conventional portable terminals necessarily includes an antenna device, data input and output devices, and devices for transmitting and receiving data. The data input is typically a keypad, by which a user can input a data with a finger pressing, or a touch pad or touch screen. A typical LCD may also be used as the data output device.
The conventional portable terminals as described above have antenna devices that can be classified into external antenna devices and embedded antenna devices according to the locations at which the antenna devices are mounted to the portable terminals. More specifically, the embedded antenna devices, which are mounted inside of the portable terminals, impose more spatial restriction on the manufacture of the portable terminals than the external antenna devices.
A portable terminal having such an embedded antenna module as described above is often called an “intenna phone”.
As illustrated in FIGS. 1 to 3, the intenna phone includes an internal antenna module 50, which is directly mounted on a main printed circuit board (PCB) 21 disposed over a rear side of terminal 10, i.e., over a battery pack 22. When the intenna phone 10 is a folder-type portable terminal, a recess for seating a battery pack 22 is formed on a rear side of the terminal 10 to reduce the internal space of a main body 20 of the portable terminal and most of the internal space of the main body 20 is occupied by the main PCB 21, the battery pack 22 and the internal antenna module 50, so there is no more space for seating a speaker device 33. Therefore, the conventional folder-type intenna phone 10 includes an auxiliary PCB 31 disposed in the folder 30 and a liquid crystal display (LCD) unit 32 and a speaker device 33 mounted on the auxiliary PCB 31.
Thus, the folder 30 has a separate space for housing the LCD unit 32 and the speaker device 33. However, as illustrated in FIG. 3, the speaker device 30 is mounted on the folder 30 without a resonance space, thus producing a poor undertone so that the listener cannot hear a wide range of high quality sound.
In addition, the sound produced by the speaker device 33 mounted on the folder 30 shows a large volume difference between the states when the folder 30 has been open and when the folder 30 has been closed. That is, when the terminal 10 is in the closed state, the main body 20 blocks up a speaker hole 34 of the folder 30, thus lowering the sound volume.
Further, because the speaker device 33 is mounted in such a manner to emanate sound in a single direction, the speaker device 33 may fail to exactly transfer the sound to a listener. Also, because the speaker device is housed in the folder 30 without a resonance space, the sound may be either too small or distorted when it reaches a listener located distant from a direction in which the sound advances.
Further, when the speaker device is adjusted to increase its volume in order to prevent such a distortion, a loop phenomenon such as hauling or echo may occur, thus degrading the sound effect and the communication quality of the portable terminal.
Also, if a terminal includes a plurality of speaker devices and resonance/consonance spaces in order to overcome the drawbacks of the aforementioned prior art, the terminal cannot avoid becoming thicker against the tendency toward the greater compactness and slimness.